Alcoholic beverages such as beer, sake, and wine, green tea, and beverages containing vitamins are susceptible to discoloration and/or deterioration caused by light, in particular light at wavelengths of 380 to 500 nm. Widely used containers typically for beverages susceptible to light-induced deterioration are plastic bottles and glass bottles which are colored for achieving imperviousness to light. These colored containers contain colorants, and this significantly inhibits recovery and reuse of used containers.
A proposed solution to this is labeled containers including a colorless, transparent plastic bottle or glass bottle as a container body coated with a shrink label having imperviousness to light. Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2002-68202, for example, discloses a bottle having a heat-shrinkable synthetic resin film containing an ultraviolet screening agent such as zinc oxide. JP-A No. 2002-285020 discloses a container with a heat-shrinkable label prepared from a white film containing a specific amount of titanium dioxide. These containers, however, have relatively high light transmission factor particularly to visible light and do not have sufficient imperviousness to light. JP-A No. 2003-26252 discloses a container with a shrink label. The shrink label includes a heat-shrinkable film containing a white pigment and having one side to be designed and the other side printed black. This type of container, however, has a black inner side of the label, and when one look in on a beverage such as milk beverage or beer at an inlet of the container bottle, the beverage looks blackish and has poor appearance which could deteriorate one's appetite.